City leaders pray for Tron revamp help

A long-awaited refurbishment of the A-listed Royal Mile building has faced years of delays and the city council said last year it could not afford to press ahead with the original plans.

The council has now linked up with the organisation that manages Edinburgh's world heritage sites to launch a hunt for a new developer to step in and get work under way.

Previous proposals for the building, which houses remains of the oldest surviving street in the Capital, have included turning it into an exhibition space, a heritage centre, a restaurant or a cafe, but nothing has ever materialised.

Edinburgh World Heritage and the council have now spent 11,000 on hiring architects to draw up a full conservation and feasibility study.

They will use the findings to try to attract new ideas from private firms interested in bringing the space back into use.

A spokesman for Edinburgh World Heritage said: "The Tron Kirk is of outstanding importance for its architecture, its position in the streetscape of the Royal Mile and its place in the history of the city.

"Having stood at the heart of the city for over 370 years it can rightly be regarded as a key part of the character of the Old Town and the World Heritage Site.

"The conservation statement brings together for the first time all the available information about the building, and assesses the significance of its surviving features.

"This study will be vital in deciding on any future adaptations of the building, and we look forward to working with the council on finding a sustainable new use for this important Edinburgh landmark."

Initial plans to redevelop the building were drawn up in the 1970s, when a new exhibition and visitor space was to be created.

However, the recession led to funding for the scheme drying up.

A 545,000 project to create a new heritage centre was then launched in 1983, but never gained momentum.

Planning consent was given in 2006 to convert the building into an archaeology exhibition space, with cafe, restaurant and function facilities. However, the council confirmed last year that it had put the plans on hold because costs would be too high.

Councillor Jim Lowrie, the city's planning leader, said: "Empty buildings are never a good thing, particularly those as valuable to the city as the Tron Kirk, and so we are doing all that we can to bring it back into use, ideally public use."

In the conservation statement, Simpson and Brown Architects described the building, which is now on the Scottish Civic Trust's "at risk" register, as being of "outstanding importance". The firm said: "Having stood at the heart of the Old Town for over 370 years it might be regarded as an embodiment of both religious and civic history, having been constructed by the town council on the model of contemporary Dutch churches and altered because of the construction of the South Bridge, one of the most significant engineering projects associated with the development of the New Town; and having its present steeple as a reminder of the Great Fire of 1824."